How do all those flags get placed on the graves of veterans each year? Volunteers young and old do it

Skip Wylie rested his weight on an iron poker, and stared down at the grave marker of Pvt. Lester Finney, born Dec. 13, 1898, and died Jan. 8, 1970.

“He’s a veteran of World War I. I think that was the one that was supposed to end it,” Wylie said.

Of course it didn’t. After World War I came Wylie’s war, World War II. He served with the Navy in the Philippines. His best friend didn’t come back.

“He was a signal man on our ship. We got hit by a kamikaze. To think that he was 17 and got wiped out, and here I am, 87 and going.”

Wylie was spending four hours in the hot morning sun, doing his part to plant hundreds of small U.S. flags on the graves of veterans who are buried at Rolling Green Cemetery in Lower Allen Township.

Each year flags are placed on the markers of tens of thousands of veterans buried in cemeteries throughout the midstate, more than 16,000 in Cumberland County alone.

Taxpayers buy the flags through the county government, but placing the flags each year falls to volunteers like Wylie.

It’s tradition, but also a law. Cumberland County Veterans’ Affairs Director Neal Delisanti said the state county code mandates the flags be placed on the graves just before Memorial Day, and that the flags stay there at least until the first working day after July 4.

Wylie was part of a team of volunteers from Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7530 in Lower Allen Twp.

The veterans conduct this like a military operation. Each team gets assigned a different section of the cemetery, and each team member has an assigned duty.

One person has a map to direct the others toward where a veterans’ grave marker is supposed to be. Another shouts out the names of buried veterans.

Wylie uses the iron poker, provided by the cemetery, to dig a small hole in the grass in the upper left corner above each marker. Another member places the flag in the hole.

Most of the buried veterans have grave markers but some don’t, which makes finding where to place the flag a challenge, said Dave Barninger, incoming Post 7530 commander. The volunteers place the flag at what amounts to the best guess for where the veteran is buried, based on the information the cemetery provides.

The volunteers also leave some flags behind with the cemetery, in case they miss a veterans’ grave or if a relative comes up later asking why there isn’t a flag at the grave of their loved one.

Wylie may have been the oldest person planting the flags at Rolling Green, but he’s relatively new to the job. He’s lived in the same house in New Cumberland for 51 years and had often admired how the rows of flags were carefully placed on the veterans’ graves.

“I drove by this for years and thought how great it was that they did this. Finally I said to the wife, I’m going to look into this,” Wylie said.

At the other end of the age spectrum, and at the other end of the cemetery, was 8-year-old Jack Young of Cub Scout Pack 54 of the Adventure District.

His father, Charlie Young, was training his son in the art of how to make the hole with the poker.

“Put your weight on it,” he told his son.

“If you don’t make a hole, then you get that,” Young said, displaying the jagged wooden edge of a flag that broke in two.

Unlike those in the VFW, Young said he never served in the military. But he grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the TV news reporting the nightly death toll from the Vietnam War. For Young placing the flags serves those who served, and is a way to pass on that tradition to a new generation.

“I remember as a little boy growing up going to Memorial Day (events). I’m sure glad I can share that with my son. I hope Jack never has to go to war, but I want him to understand the importance of protecting our freedoms,” Young said.

Another Pack 54 member, 8-year-old Dalton Liddick of New Cumberland, walked across the cemetery with a bunch of flags on his shoulder, accompanied by mom Glenda Liddick and 4-year-old sister Madison.

“His brother is fighting in Afghanistan now, so he wanted to be a part of it,” Glenda Liddick said. “The boys enjoy looking at the stones and seeing what war they were in.”

Because Rolling Green is so large, another VFW Post, 7415 of New Cumberland, shares in the task of planting the close to 6,000 flags to mark the veterans’ graves in the cemetery. That number also includes flags that Post 7415 places at a much smaller cemetery at the Historic Peace Church on Trindle Road in Hampden Twp.

Post 7415 President Ed Bechdel, a former Army artilleryman, takes a vacation day off from his job each year to do this.

Each year the posts get more flags, because more veterans are dying, especially the ones from World War II. But Bechdel seldom has a problem finding volunteers. Every year the post thanks the Cub Scouts and the other volunteers with a free lunch at the post.

That’s an incentive, but Bechdel also finds that once someone does this for the first time, they find it rewarding and they tell others.

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